Fog turns ETSU basketball team's trip to C-U into an odyssey

CHAMPAIGN — Friday turned out to be a long travel day for the East Tennessee State men's basketball team.

The Buccaneers, who are scheduled to play Illinois at 1 p.m. Saturday at State Farm Center, didn't arrive at their Champaign hotel until 3:30 a.m. today, according to tweets from ETSU head coach Steve Forbes.

The plan was for the Johnson City, Tenn.-based team to arrive at Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington around 4:30 p.m. Friday, but according to Forbes, Delta Airlines canceled that flight because of fog in the area. The Buccaneers were instead booked on a flight to Chicago's Midway International Airport through Atlanta.

Forbes indicated that his team landed in Chicago at 10 p.m.

But the last leg of their journey, a 127-mile trip from Midway to Champaign-Urbana, was further delayed when the bus they chartered suffered a flat tire 10 miles away from the airport, and according to the team's Twitter account, the Buccaneers were still at Midway at 11:23 p.m. Friday:

About 12:20 a.m., Forbes tweeted out a picture of the team still at the airport:

By about 1:15 a.m., the team tweeted that the bus had arrived and the team was making its way to Champaign-Urbana:

Further complicating matters, the team's luggage was still in Atlanta.

Saturday's tilt will mark the first-ever meeting between the Illini and Buccaneers.